Found Family
by Andy Longwood
Summary: A character study of a developing crew. Primarily OCs, features canon cameos. I believe in space zombies who eat faces, why shouldn't I believe in reincarnation? Oneshot, complete.


A/N: Basically, I said to myself one day, "If my best friend and our friends and I lived in the Firefly universe, what would we be?" 

And, since thoughts like that tend to become disastrous without fail, I tried desperately to abandon it, but I was intrigued. If you took the basic personalities of the people I know and put them in a universe like the one in Firefly, what iwould/i they be? How would it change them, how would it make them stay the same, how would they find each other, and most importantly, how would they react to the things going on in their world?

Character analysis is, after all, pretty much my favorite part of writing. And this one wouldn't leave me alone. I wanted to know what the other crews were thinking when Serenity happened, I wanted to know who else was out there flying.

Many thanks to Saphie, who provided the rudiments of the final speech, as well as lots of character plotting, and for everything she does in general. There's a reason she'll always be my Captain.

* * *

**Found Family**

By Andy Longwood

Before the Captain was a Captain, she was a little girl, and she sat on her roof and looked at the stars for hours, and tried to figure out how to get up where they were.

"I don't wanna join the army," she said to her best friend, who was unmistakably beautiful, and would be possessed of an inordinate number of piercings when she was old enough to pay for them. "The Alliance's got nothing for folks like us. We ain't rich enough and we ain't doing enough in the way of pissing anyone off, we're just good little settlers who sit around and do our farming all quiet-like."

"Ain't no fun," agreed her best friend, who was Smart, and no mistake. "All's here for us is to get married and have seventeen kids, one right after the other. They don't tell us so, but it's what they want."

"Then we'll jus' have to do something else," the Captain said.

Her best friend said, "Like what?"

The Captain leaned back and looked at the stars.

"I'm good at bossing people around," she said, "And I like new places." The gas giant that their little moon circled was slowly rising off the horizon, huge and blue like a floating ocean. "I think I'll become a transport captain."

And she does.

And her best friend becomes her First Mate, because she can't think of anyone she'd rather have watching her back, and even though they've already decided what they are by the time they're fifteen, there's still the small matter of buying a ship to be Captain and First Mate of. They get a stall together in a place that would have been called a Flea Market on Earth-that-was, selling comic books and amusing bobble-head dolls of the Hegemon, right across from a man who runs a grain outlet with his daughter, who's young, and his responsibility.

The First Mate spends a bit more time over there than at her own stall, but it's not like the Captain minds. She just makes kissy faces at them and leers, and when they get married, she dances at their wedding even though she's not drunk in the slightest.

"He's gotta find a place in our operation," she reminds the First Mate, during a quiet moment of the reception, and the First Mate smiles at him dancing with his daughter and says, "He's got one."

They merge their profits. They buy a ship. And the First Mate's husband, who had an interesting life before he decided his daughter came first, becomes the Pilot and flies them off to Persephone for their first job. They dock in Eavesdown and sneer back at the higher-class folks while the cargo gets loaded, and take off for Greenleaf.

On the way they get lost and end up delivering three days late, and on the way back they nearly get blindsided by a ship full of Reavers, and it's some damn fancy flying that gets them safely to Beaumonde, where they hole up in the Maidenhead to get good and drunk out of sheer relief.

It ain't safe, they know. The pilot knows it especially, because he's got his daughter to look out for, and he'll be damned if she comes off the worse for this venture. And they ain't exactly wealthy in the way of experience, nor of reputation, so they go back to the core and keep their jobs small for a while. Just until they can get the hang of this.

As luck would have it, they survive the first year; and by the end of it, they've got themselves a pretty good reputation, and enough money so that they can afford not to keep trying to patch up the engine themselves, mostly from people who can't get Tanaka and Reynolds to transport their stuff on account of them always being otherwise employed, and for better money. The Pilot's little girl gets bigger, and she keeps them smiling even when they can't afford to feed anyone but her (because she always comes first), and the Pilot gets honed and the First Mate gets smarter and the Captain gets sneakier in her dealings. They fly better jobs now, still not great ones, but enough to keep them in protein and water. It ain't perfect, but it's going that way.

* * *

The Captain meets the Companion in the codex section of a core planet bookstore. The latter's a regular patron, the former a completely unexpected anomaly. Codices are ridiculously expensive, and only purchased by the very rich, or the very nostalgic, or, more often, both. So the scruffy Captain with dirt under her nails, browsing through the hologlass-covered cases, is getting a lot more attention from the store's employees than, say, the beautifully dressed woman with a manicure who's in the poetry section, reading Neruda and Whitman and Noyes. The idea is that the Companion can and will give monetary compensation for whatever she wants, but that Captain's jacket is just ripe for concealment of a good, expensive book, and she's in their most expensive section.

Hologlass is a remarkable invention, used mostly in windows in outer-world bars, able to contain a climate-controlled environment and allow a troublemaking drunk to be thrown straight through without damage costs. In the core planets it's used in stores like this one to preserve goods and still allow them to be inspected more closely. Like books – and to tell the truth, the owners of the store wouldn't have let the Captain with her dirty hands in at all if she hadn't shown them her credit at the door. She's spoiling herself this time, reaching for the thickest book on the shelf, one she could download as an online document for beer money, but there's nothing quite like the feel of a book in your hands – when another hand, clean and polished, reaches for the same book.

And somehow, in the process of apologizing and delivering veiled insults and deferring to each other and mentioning how much they enjoy codices and storybooks and this book in particular and that book over there which is awfully good too and when I was young mother always read from a codex and I always heard this one, do you know it, they find out, as women will, that they're suddenly very good friends, and go to have tea together.

They take their conversation and their books to a little teahouse where the Captain gets sludge-black coffee and the Companion gets redbush tea, and they continue their conversation about the book tucked (legally) away in the Captain's jacket (one about a Wizard and a Prisoner) and the book in the Companion's shopping back (about a Lord and his Ring), and all the stories they've been told, and how no one appreciates classical literature these days, and Anthropology, which the Captain thinks sounds incredibly boring and scientific but which the Companion is fascinated by, and Shooting Bastards, which the Companion has only heard about and which the Captain does a lot. In half an hour the Captain finally understands exactly how the Europeans of Earth-that-was were able to supplant the rest of the world ("Naturally the theory of genetic superiority was complete bunk, but they used it as both an explanation for their conquering and a reason to conquer . . .") and after another half an hour the Companion knows where to shoot a man so that he won't die right away but can't taunt you while he does ("which grates on you, even though it shouldn't, because he's a pisser anyway if you were able to shoot him in the first place . . ."), and it gets out that the Companion's looking to get herself a shuttle and the Captain remembers that she just happens to have one that's ripe for the renting, and having a registered Companion on board would open up new jobs she's barely seen enough to dream about.

They come to an agreement, and the Captain says, "I guess you'll wanna see our credentials now."

"Not really," says the Companion, pleasantly.

The Captain raises an eyebrow.

"You don't wanna know what sort of operation you'd be shipping out with?"

"As long as I can make appointments and keep them, I'm perfectly fine." The Companion sets her empty cup in its saucer. "Of course I will be leaving a record with the Guild of who I'm with, down to the last crew member." Which is shorthand for, "If you kill me, people more powerful than you will hunt you down and torture you to death in a public forum," but the Captain's not insulted, because she's heard it before, and there are very few people crazy enough to risk the punishment associated with crossing a registered Companion. "I've rented shuttles before. Really, I'm in it for the exploration." She delicately pours the last of her tea into the cup and sips it. "Besides, I've heard of you," she adds, pleasantly. "The last crew I shipped out with said you were the stubbornest most dog-minded bastard either side of the core, and considering the strength of their personal character, I believe that was the highest compliment I've ever heard said of a person."

She smiles and sets down her teacup.

"For a Companion, you're pretty plain-spoken," the Captain says, when they've left the teahouse and are heading towards the shipping yards. "Or anyhow, I never met a highborn woman who was easy to talk to."

"I'm not all that high born," the Companion admits. "My parents held three jobs between them to pay for my education. They never stopped sending waves to remind me of it, either – sometimes I think the guilt is the only reason I passed."

The Captain wants to know, how does a girl decide to be a whore for a living? And the Companion says it wasn't so much about being a whore as being an artist – not a lot of room for people who like to dance and like to sing and enjoy the artistry of words on a backwater town. What they thought was most valuable was her diplomacy (she was always good at mediating), but a teenage girl with a knack for calming people down can only refine her talents so much on her own, and what they wanted her for most was somebody's wife, and wives have no time for intellectual progress on a planet like that.

Plus, she had the scores. It took her three tries to get them, but the Guild never did rely on them entirely. Areas of talent were always taken into perspective.

"A lot of the girls who didn't pass were highborn," the Companion explains. "They weren't used to having to work for anything. They wanted people to tell them how pretty they were, how well they danced, how smart they were, without practicing their smiles and leaps and algebra. They managed basic educations and were sent home before actual Companion training began."

"But you couldn't give up, could you?" asks the Captain, who knows about parental guilt. The Companion shakes her head.

"There wasn't really a contest," she says. "I could work hard and get everything I ever wanted, or I could give up and have to work hard for nothing for the rest of my life. That's all there was to it."

The Captain knows about that sort of thing, and within a day the Companion's moved in and they ship out for their next job.

They break down on New Melbourne, and the Captain decides it's time to get a mechanic.

* * *

She finds one in a bar, when a rowdy drunk knocks a brand-new Core-quality Wave projector through the hologlass, and the bar matron kicks him out and calls for her stepson, who comes out of the back room with his giggling little half-brother slung over his shoulder.

He's whip-thin and tall, with a big smile and too much black hair and no shirt underneath his leather apron. His nose looks as though it's been broken at least twice. In half an hour he fixes what her last Mechanic couldn't have figured out in a day, and the bar cheers when the holographic ball game appears again, and the bar matron ruffles her stepson's hair and he starts up a game of checkers with his little brother while she gets them both dinner. The Captain seats herself next to him.

"I'll buy you a drink," she offers. The guy shakes his head.

"I ain't a drinker."

The Captain raises an eyebrow. "You live in a bar and you don't drink?"

"Exactly," says the Mechanic, cheerfully. "Let's say I started. Let's say I didn't stop." He taps his head with a wrench. "Gotta keep a clear head, with this crowd."

A regular slaps him on the back, genially, and calls him a sack of inbred meat in Chinese. The Mechanic calls him a fucking drunk in English and says his mule's fixed and he can pay him tomorrow when he picks it up. It's all very heartwarming.

The Captain says, "You got any skill with engines?"

"I ain't bad," says the Mechanic. "Long as you ain't asking me to fix no Gurtsler, 'cause that ain't worth my time or yours."

The Captain makes it clear what she thinks of Gurtslers and what she'd do to one on her ship, and says, "You any good at keeping a ship flying?"

She has his attention now, and he asks for specifics, and she can see the excitement dancing behind his eyes as she gives him the details of the op, says "Interested?" and gets a very enthusiastic "Fuck yeah," in response. In under an hour she's learned that he's the man of the family since his Sheriff father got shot two years ago and that he does repairs on the side, on everything from radios to mules to tuneups on docked ships, but his little brother's got his heart set on being a doctor, and there's no way a bar matron and a small-time Mechanic can afford to send him to the right school on Greenleaf. It's not told to be a heartstring puller because he says it all greatfully, matter-of-factly, since he's got the job in the bag. The bar matron, out of gratitude, keeps the Captain in beer and home cooking and puts her up for the night in one of the inn rooms, and the next morning the Mechanic has one farewell tussle with his brother, kisses his stepmother on the cheek, and follows the Captain to her ship with a grin the size of a gas giant and a suitcase full of tools and a plastic bag full of his two spare shirts (he doesn't wear them much, because he wants them to stay clean).

She introduces him to the first mate, the pilot, and their daughter, and when the Companion comes back from her appointment in the city, she introduces them. The Mechanic forgets how to speak when she bows to him and smiles. This amuses the Captain so much that she hangs around in the engine room just to leer at him all day, until he insists that her presence is disrupting some very sensitive pieces of machinery and that if she doesn't want the ship to burst into a giant fireball next time they enter atmo, she'd better leave now, and she yells, "Have a good wank!" and chuckles when she hears the unmistakable sound of a wrench hitting the engine room door behind her.

* * *

The Companion gets excited whenever they take a job that takes them to a planet that isn't part of the Core. She goes into dusty towns with her pretty gowns and a notebook, collecting scientific information and smiling kindly at the people, all her training and her comfortable ways putting them at ease so that she gets more out of them than they know, and sometimes she has to be dragged away by the Captain, who wants to make it back on schedule, and who doesn't think that it's strictly safe for her to walk around in settler's villages on her own.

Ironically, she might be safer on her own than the Captain. It's her status that preserves her. There isn't a person there who doesn't look at her and know she's a noble lady, not to be touched, because the Guild knows she's there and knows you're there too and will punish you like you ain't never dreamed a person could hurt if you touch her wrong.

Plus there's a shiny little pistol concealed somewhere in her skirts – the Captain's never quite figured out where – and she's a damn good markswoman. They really do teach them everything in Companion school.

The Mechanic, true to his job, stays behind to fix up the ship, and usually gets landed with the kid, since the First Mate always goes with the Captain on the rendezvous, and the Pilot goes with his wife. The kid's sweet, sweet as honey, and her daddy ain't exaggerating when he says she's real bright. The Mechanic's already got her helping out in the engine room, taking things apart and putting them back together oiled and ready to go. The Companion gives her pencils and paper and she sits in her corner of the engine room while the Mechanic wrestles with Grav boosters and crossed wires, and she draws all the parts, neat and categorized, and puts flowers in between them. The Mechanic gives her engine blueprints to copy and the Pilot says they're works of art and puts them on the cooling unit with magnets. She and the Mechanic are bestest friends and she's his _meimei_(1) and he's going to let her throw a Gurtsler out a moving train on her eighth birthday, if her father doesn't catch them at it first.

There ain't a guarantee he'll stop them so much as want to help. The Pilot likes a good laugh as much as the rest of the crew, and causes more than a few of them. He's a big man, hails from the Rim, with a sense of humor to match his smile and a past that makes for Interesting Stories. If the only army worth joining weren't the Alliance Feds, and lead by bastards, he'd be in one – he believes in fighting for a better world. For his daughter. He's always been a family man, even when he was out getting material for his Interesting Stories, even before his daughter existed. He believes in destiny.

Which is good, because his wife does too. Destiny, and karma, and faith and luck and superstition. She's not the First Mate you expect, because if there's a calming factor on their ship it's the Captain, not her. She says what she means, when she means it, regardless of who doesn't want to hear it, and gets written off. Obnoxious, she's called, but there's no one the Captain would rather have backing her up (except, perhaps, the Companion, who she's thinking she wouldn't mind having around to depend on in a pinch).

They make a good pair, the Pilot and the First Mate. The pants, as they say, are worn equally. They're just as strong as each other – no more, no less.

And as for the kid, the First Mate loves her, but the kid has a mom, and it's not the First Mate. She isn't going to try to be.

She'd still die for her at the drop of a hat. She's her husband's child. She's _a_ child. That's reason enough to fight to the death for her.

Meanwhile, between the empowerment from the captain and the friendship from the First Mate and the education from the Companion, the kid is practically drowning in feminine influence. They tell her stories and the First Mate teaches her to shoot and the Companion teaches her to dance and the Captain teaches her to turn her eyelids inside out, which isn't strictly useful but makes for a good laugh. She's their morale, their baby, the next generation of their found family.

* * *

The Mechanic likes yo-yos, and he's wired one to play _You Are my Sunshine_ when he spins it, and _Ben tian sheng de yi dui rou_(2) when he does the "around the universe" trick, because socially unacceptable songs are an icebreaker. He's in the kitchen with a screwdriver and a brand-new cherry-red Skymaster-brand yo-yo, classic shape, with a clutch transaxle, prying it open to make room for the little chip that's playing a tinny rendition of _Bao Bei_ (3) when the Companion finds him, and she manages to sit in the chair next to him before he notices her, partially because her manner is quiet and partially because he's not very observant when he's working.

"Hey!" he says, when he finally notices her. He's got rooibos tea and he gestures to it – "How – you thirsty? Here, I'll get you some – "

She accepts the tea when he hands her the cup, and their hands touch. He thinks she did it on purpose at first, and then corrects himself, because that would be unprofessional, and he apologizes for the grease on his hands, but she only sips the tea and asks who the new toy is for.

"_Meimei_," he says, referring to the pilot's little girl. He thinks one that does the work for her will get her the feel for sleeping. Everyone knows that learning to yo-yo is an irreplaceable part of every young lady's educational development. The Mechanic likes to think he's making a contribution to her physical and emotional growth.

"She'll love it," says the Companion. "Will it play _Rong wo men fa cai_(4)"

The Mechanic taps the singing chip. "_Bao Bei_."

"You should make it play _Rong wo men fa cai_" she says. "It's her favorite song."

"I thought _Bao Bei_ was her favorite."

"She changed her mind."

"When?"

"Two minutes ago. She told me in the bridge."

The Mechanic pries the chip out with a sigh and taps it off with his screwdriver. "Back to the recording studio," he says, and the Companion smiles, and he can tell she's not wearing lipstick today because he pays a great deal of attention to her lips. Part of him says he shouldn't, and the other part says that she takes great cares to keep her lips pretty out here in the black and it's the least he can do to notice them, and another part wants him to forget about looking and take her right here on the kitchen table. Do they teach them how to do that to a man, at that school she's been to? There must be a science behind it.

Anyway, she smiles, and says, "If you're going to be recording something anyway, would you mind if I commissioned an order?"

He thinks he should be surprised, but somehow, he can picture her with a yo-yo. Mainly because he has already - pulling gravity, rocking the cradle, pinwheeling front and back, knows what color the yo-yo is (green like her eyes, butterfly-shaped) and what it plays (_moon river wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style someday, you dream maker, you heartbreaker, wherever you're going I'm going your way_), has the axle in a box in the engine room set aside because it's smoother than the rest and he's had it there ever since he thought of her yo-ing the first time, in one of her slinkier gowns, because full skirts would get in the way. It's a surprisingly dirty thought – anything arousing is dirty – and he gulps suddenly before asking, "What – what color do you want? What song? Style preference – "

She says, "Surprise me. Except – I want a certain song."

She stands up, with a rustling of fabric and a wave of that soft smell of hers (she must perfume her dresses) and says, with a suddenly wonderful wicked gleam in her eyes, "Can you find me, _The Lady is a Tramp?_"

It's not that surprising, really. He's never liked a girl who didn't like classical music.

The Mechanic nods, and for the next week he's scrambling through his parts, placing orders, recording songs, forgetting about the engine and only half-listening when the Captain calls him a worthless puddle of panda piss when he forgets to reroute the G-line. He whistles to himself whenever he works on it, and adds in a surprise.

Yo-yoing is probably not something they learn in Companion school, but something tells him that she's an independent learner. And everyone likes hearing Moon River when they do a Reverse Double or Nothing.

All those that can, anyway. He bets she mastered it years ago.

_Moon river wider than a mile_

_I'm crossing you in style someday_

_You dream maker, you heartbreaker_

_Wherever you're going I'm going your way_

_Two drifters off to see the world_

_There's such a lot of world to see_

_We're after the same rainbows end_

_Waiting round the band_

_My huckleberry friend, moon river_

_And me_

* * *

The First Mate gets shot.

Not too badly, mind you. It's a shoulder wound, and to hear her talk about it she nearly dies, but the pilot's damned if he's going to let his girl succumb when he can fly her to safety. Beaumonte isn't the best for medical facilities but it's the closest, and once the First Mate's recovered and back on the ship, they breathe a collective sigh and head off to the Maidenhead for a drink, so that she and the Pilot and the kid can get some time to themselves.

Things seem to be going well, or at least, not disastrously. The Captain's on her second beer and the fan dancer's practically elegant tonight. The Companion's sipping her redbush tea and rolling her eyes at an undernourished-looking man who's expounding on the virtues of her cleavage. She's small-breasted, and wouldn't have any if it weren't for her bodice, and anyhow, he's not worth her time, but the Mechanic's irritated and has a wrench in his hand which he's all but waving in the guy's face.

"Sweetheart, why dincha tell me you had a girlfriend?" says the man, who's got a crazy look in his eyes and a sycophantic grin. "You just get hotter by the minute, doncha?"

"Shut up!" says the Mechanic, who's unusually short of cool tonight. The Companion puts her hand on his forearm and he visibly relaxes under her touch, and looks at her with puppy eyes. The Captain, watching them from the bar, snickers audibly and considers egging the drunk on, because he's funny, and the Companion can take care of herself, and teasing the Mechanic is always fun.

"Woah there," says the guy, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. "Hey lady, if I'da known she was taken, I'd never have tried anything. I'm an honorable man. Ain't I an honorable man, sweetheart?"

"You're about to be an honorable man in prison," says the Companion, very calmly.

The man grins at the Mechanic. "See? Your girlfriend likes me."

The Mechanic sputters, and looks at the Companion, because he doesn't exactly want to refute him, but doesn't want to let him insinuate anything that might make her feel dishonored, and the man goes on, "Besides, in them pretty clothes I coulda sworn she was one a' them high class Core whores."

Then the Captain has to grab the Mechanic around the waist as he goes to smash the guy's grinning head in with his wrench, and the Companion places her half-full cup on the bar and stands.

"The term is Companion, and even if you could afford one's services, you would never be able to elicit them," she says to the man very cheerfully. She hands him a slip of currency and says, "Here is a credit for beer, please go pass out in a gutter," and goes upstairs for her gun, the Mechanic hot on her heels.

The Captain smirks at the guy, who's pocketing the note, and says "Do you try to be a bastard, or does it come naturally?"

Then, some Feds walk in the bar and shoots Fanty and Mingo and all fucking hell breaks loose. The Companion throws the Captain her gun when the patrons start shooting back, and the Natural Bastard produces a gorram baseball bat out of nowhere and starts bashing skulls on his way up the stairs. The guy's in a firefight and he's laying waste with a fucking _baseball bat_. That'd be something the Captain would admire, if she wasn't aiming just-in-case from behind an overturned table and if the Companion didn't have a graze on her right leg already, and if she and the Mechanic weren't being aimed at, when all of a sudden the aimer goes down to the sound of a semi-automatic and Batguy swoops out of nowhere with a gun that should be too damn big for him and starts beating the already dead guy's skull in, yelling "YOU DON'T FUCKING SHOOT AT LADIES, YOU BASTARD. IT'S AGAINST THE FUCKING LAW."

Then he looks at the Mechanic, with his rifle up on one shoulder and blood dripping off his baseball bat and grins as he says "Notice how I cleverly insinuated that you were a lady. I'm damn clever, I am."

The Captain gestures them out of the bar and they run, and the Companion's got an arm around the Mechanic's shoulder because her leg is bleeding like nobody's business, and when they get to the ship the Pilot gets the bandages and he and the Mechanic, under the Companion's instruction, start patching her leg up while the Companion winces and gives them instructions.

"That was fucking nuts," she says, and Batguy grins.

"Been in worse," he brags. "Smashy always wins." Then he kisses that bat like no man's ever kissed a woman, and the Captain gets a thought.

"Ever been hired as a mercenary?" she asks. The guy looks thoughtful.

"Well now, are you askin' me aboard?"

"I might be."

"I'll have to talk to Smashy first."

"You do that."

The man turns his back to her and converses animatedly with his gun and his bat. After a few seconds, he turns around and says, "Shooty says ya'll look shifty, but we'll do it."

"Great. Get on the ship. We're out of here."

The Mechanic decides that the Captain really is crazy, and the Companion looks constipated for a whole day, but the Mercenary is surprisingly endearing, and by the time they get the broadcast wave from Malcolm Reynolds about the Alliance's worst crime ever, he's part of the Family, and he sits with them at the table while they remember the Alliance Official's screams as she was raped to death, and wonder where they go from here.

* * *

They've stopped taking Alliance jobs. None of them could stomach it.

Chances are if things get bad enough, they may do one official run or two. For the sake of the kid. Principles are one thing, but children . . . you make a better world for them, no matter what you have to sacrifice of yourself.

They don't know anything about an Operative, and it's probably best that they don't.

The Rim is dangerous, and they have scares – at one point, the Captain, the First Mate, and the Mercenary are chased across Hera by a pack of Reavers. Hera, of all places. The Pilot shows up in time to gun them down (they have a gun mounted now), but the wiring of the shuttle is fried and the Mechanic spends an entire week getting it running again. The Companion still goes out and talks to settlers and takes her notes, but now the Mercenary goes with her, if he's there, and if he isn't, the Mechanic does. He has a battle wrench now. It's bigger than a normal wrench, and he calls it Bellatrix.

He never stops being crazy about her. She's got such a knack for keeping people at ease that he spends half his time feeling like they've been friends forever and the other half in awe of her – of her insight, and her education, and the way her hair is so very red in any light, the way she sings _Summertime_ when the sound system is broken (again) and the Captain absolutely has to hear it.

Her hand still touches his when they sit beside each other at the dinner table, or when he hands her a cup of tea, or when she just brushes his when they're walking opposite ways through the narrow halls of the ship. He's not sure how to properly ask out a woman who gets paid to be someone's date, figures there must be isome/i bylaw that allows for love, because they're Women as well as Professional, and they have feelings.

Not that he's hoping. Desperately, every hour of the day.

He's working late on the engine one night when she comes in, quietly as she always does, and somehow he knows she's there without looking. It must be her smell. Even the smells of oil and engine grease can't sour her presence.

"I bet you're good at keeping secrets," she says, softly.

He forgets for a moment that she's a Lady instead of a Friend and says "Can a bear shit in the woods?" and then forgets that bashing his brains out with a wrench is not an acceptable way of dealing with embarrassment. He has it in his hand, ready to use, when she crosses the threshold into the room, and says, "Then keep this one for me," and kisses him.

When the light fades out of his brain, he hears her saying, "Come to my shuttle. Please." And he doesn't even have to nod, because he's practically carrying her there anyway, and oh, _oh_, they make the stars move.

* * *

They make a successful run for a wealthy businessman who not only gave them a job but requested the services of the Companion, who enjoys catering to him because he's a philanthropist-at-large, and one of a few good men who make a six-figure salary sum.

In celebration, they all get drunk, even the Companion, who tells a story about a totally different client who was taking the wrong pill for what it was he wanted to do that night and didn't figure out why it wasn't working until he hadn't been able to take a crap for a week afterwards, and everyone laughs and the Mechanic blushes and the Companion's grinning and cherry red to the face, and the Captain says "Christ onna cracker, will you two just shag already?" and that just makes the Companion start giggling endlessly, and the Mechanic stands up and passes out, and everyone decides on a rude phrase to write on his forehead in permanent ink.

When they're done, the Captain gives the Pilot and the First Mate the night off so they can give the kid a new sibling and takes the helm herself, sailing peacefully into the black. The Mercenary climbs noisily up and sits next to her, in the co-pilot's seat, bottle of moonshine in one hand which he probably brewed in his toilet and bloodstained baseball bat in the other.

"I got a feeling Smashy's gonna get a bunch more airing out," he says, propping his feet up and passing her the bottle of moonshine, so that he can get to polishing his dearest darlingest weapon.

"I have a feeling," she agrees. Ain't no lights on but the stars themselves, and she leans her head back to them, lets it flood right into the cockpit. She takes a sip of foul-tasting moonshine and swallows it down, burning all the way. "Damn stuff tastes like shit."

"Buy me some good stuff so's I can compare," says the Mercenary, and she grins and makes a rude gesture at him. They laugh, and the Mercenary puts his baseball bat on the ground and his arms behind his head.

"You still thinkin' about 'em?" he asks.

"Which 'em you mean?"

"Alla them. Alliance. Reavers. The Crew."

The Captain blinks her eyes at the stars. "Don't think I'll ever stop."

"You got good people backin' you up. You're lucky."

People have called her lucky before and she's been flippant, but all she says now is, "Yeah. We all are."

The Mercenary gestures for the moonshine bottle, and she passes it over so that he can take a swig.

"I coulda grown up with a guy like you," the Captain says, out of nowhere. "Someone crazy as you, you coulda been my brother."

The Mercenary shrugs. "Siblings? Maybe we was," he says, "Stranger things happen at sea."

The Captain gives him a Look. "You believe in that stuff?"

"I believe in space zombies that eat faces," says the Mercenary. "Why not reinstation?"

"Reincarnation," corrects the Captain.

"Only a believer'd know that," he teases.

"Or a person who hangs around one. Talk to the First Mate about that." But she's grinning, 'cause hey, maybe there's a reason everyone on this boat gets along with so few hitches. Far be it from her to say it's all a huge spot of luck that they get a crew on the first try who'd all die for each other.

"I'd say it's a good thing," says the Mercenary, "That I got on this boat when I did. Gonna need a family like this one before I'm done."

"So'm I,' agrees the Captain. The horrible bottle is empty in an hour, and there's laughter and insults and terms of endearment and only they know which is which, and when she zonks out the Mercenary takes over, and in the morning (although there's no morning in space), she waits for a reasonable hour and takes the shipwide and makes an announcement.

"This is yer captain on the squawkbox, here. Ladies and gents, due to recent events, I've decided that this ship is going to be a massive thorn in the side of the Alliance. Anyone ain't willin' to be part of that is free to be dropped off at their port of choice with a hefty bonus to get them by, and I won't look at them any differently than I have for all these years. Those who stay...well, it would be mightily appreciated. So, who's for going?"

Not a sound comes across the shipwide, and she says, "Who's for staying?" and everybody – hungover as they are – cheers.

She clicks off the comm, and after some thought, clicks it back on again.

"We been good little boys and girls for the Alliance for a long time now." She breaks into a wide, shit-eating grin. "Not to get prosaic on y'all, but I'd say it's time for us to imisbehave/i."

The Mechanic manages to say "The hell? Who wrote _fei fei de pi yan_(5) on my face?" before she closes off the shipwide, and she sails off into the stars, laughing as she goes.

* * *

(1) Little Sister

(2) Stupid inbred stack of meat

(3) Sweetheart

(4) Let's get rich

(5) A baboon's asscrack

_Moon River_ belongs to Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.

_The Lady is a Tramp_ belongs to Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart.

_You Are my Sunshine_ belongs to Jimmie Davis.

_Summertime _belongs to George Gershwin.

The Firefly Universe belongs to Joss Whedon.

The Captain, the First Mate, the Pilot, the Kid, the Companion, the Mechanic, and the Mercenary belong to themselves. They know who they are.


End file.
